How Can I Trust My Pills?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
How Can I Trust My Pills?
2
Wed, 10-06-2004 - 2:54pm
Ok, I know I've written on here about this already, but I really have a hard time trusting my pills. I take them religiously, except 1 night this past month, I took it an hour later than my regular time. But when it comes AF time, I freak out, thinking "I'm pregnant! Oh gosh!" How can I get myself to trust my pills better? I know they're working, as my bf and I didn't use condoms at all this past month, and I saw him A LOT, but I still am uneasy about it. I just need to learn to accept the fact that they work, right?!

-Lauren

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 10-06-2004 - 3:40pm
Yep...The pill is reliable...more so if they're taken correctly...sounds like you've just had one little slip up....I used them as my only protection for over a year before I got married and we decided to have a baby....they work!
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Wed, 10-06-2004 - 9:48pm
Hi Lauren....I'm afraid it is going to come down to you either trusting your pills or not! You know that they're 99% effective if taken absolutely correctly, you know that you're doing your best to take them correctly. But at the same time, don't forget that if you make one little mistake that the pill's effectiveness doesn't drop to zero, it just decreases from 99% to something else. Many many of us have taken pills late here and there, remember too that "on time" is a four hour window! An hour is nothing to worry about. Eight hours is, but one hour isn't.

I've been using hormonal contraceptives for almost eight years. With the exception of when I was using antibiotics or had missed pills, I haven't used an additional contraceptive. If it weren't an effective contraceptive, it wouldn't be so popular and used by millions of women around the world for the last 40 years!

One thing that I did when I started the ring was to start charting my temperatures. Temperature charting (basal body temperature) is a component of the fertility awareness method of either conceiving or contraception. The theory is that near ovulation there is a temperature shift that, if the temperatures are taken consistently and correctly, will be detectable. So every morning, before I got out of bed, I would take my temperature with a basal thermometer and write it down. I could see that after three weeks of charting, my waking temperatures were EXACTLY the same every single day except for when I had a fitful sleep or woke up too slowly. I had no temperature shift. That's just an example of how I came to trust the ring even though it was pretty new on the market at the time.

But it's up to you to decide if you're comfortable trusting the pill. Only you can get comfortable with it, and if you're not comfortable trusting the pill, you don't have to. If you want to use condoms so that you can sleep at night, fine! It's no big deal. I hope you can come to terms with whatever it is that you want! Good luck...

Judie
Co-cl for Birth Control
Judie Cl for Birth Control